Agenda

• Introduction on the COST€R project

• Why educational multimedia producers could use COST€R

• Why COST€R is not about eLearning?

• What COST€R is about?

• How does COST€R work?

• Demonstration of beta version with eProject

• Shortcomings beta version and how version 2 will be

different

• Testing COST€R

What is COST€R ?

COST€R is a website, which contains a

multilingual decision making tool that enables

producers and designers of educational multimedia

as well as content providers to estimate and plan

the costs of a multimedia application.

The COST€R project is…

• partially funded by DGEAC under the Socrates

Programme: MINERVA action (ODL and ICT in

Education)

• active from February 2002 until July 2003

The COST€R partners are…

• ATiT - Audiovisual Technologies,

Informatics & Telecommunications,

Belgium

• University Nancy 2-Vidéoscop,

France

• Open University Catalunya,

Spain

• Audiovisual Services K.U.Leuven,

Belgium

Why an educational MM producers uses COST€R ?

• Trend:

– Need for educational multimedia on a large scale

– Increase in number of multimedia producers:

teachers and institutions create their own materials

– Lack of production experience and costing

information

– Demands on the expertise of the educational

multimedia producer

Why an educational MM producers uses COST€R ?

• Making a budget=always start again, no

standardised formulas to identify cost categories

• Repeated searches for costing information

• Express and identify hidden costs

• Compare across countries and producers

Why COST€R is not about eLearning…

• Onion peeling: many layers

• Costing elements:

• Personnel, Content, Length

• Interface design

• Functional requirements

• Media elements

• Interactivity levels

• Testing and certification

• Integration with other systems

• Quality checks

• Hidden costs

• Enough attempts, not always succesful

Existing attemps to budget eLearning?

• The theory

– http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cms/research/terg/

– http://www.tltgroup.org/ (flashlight handbook)

– http://research.cstudies.ubc.ca/nce/summary.html

• Some useful tools

– http://www.marshall.edu/distance/studentsize.asp

– http://www.bnhexpertsoft.com

– http://www.wcet.info/Projects/tcm/index.asp

– http://www.intellinex.com/flash/animations/calc/costcalc_

playintro.html

• Custom built excel sheets

What COST€R is about?

Calculation of the product, the most single unit

vs

calculation of eLearning

How does COST€R work?

• Visit http://www.coster.ws/

• Explanation of background and rationale of the

tool

• 2 entrance levels

– Inexperienced level: Library of Examples

– Expert level: COST€R tool itself

Inexperienced level: Library of Examples

• Archive of existing multimedia productions

• Each production description includes:

– Short description and title

– Type of multimedia application

– Producer’s name

– Target audience

– Duration/length/size

– Total cost

– Time from concept to delivery

– Description of the production process

– Spreadsheet of costs

Library of Examples

Expert level: COST€R tool

•Database driven

•Costing info. from Spain, France and Belgium on all

production stages for video and audio production,

webdesign, videoconferencing, CD-ROM creation,

Mixed media applications, and other

•Available for adaptation to own prices

•User manual and Glossary of AV-terms in French,

Spanish, Dutch and English

•Beta version is finished, second version being made

Shortcomings of the beta version

• To much focus on the production process instead

of the different media and their specific activities.

• Distinction between OOP – CIK – COP is too

complex for a novice user

• Lot of redundant information, too much

• Not user-friendly

COST€R 2: Main features

• Activity based

• Adding / removing activities to the project on the

fly.

• Each activity is hierarchically divided in sub-

activities, represented in a tree structure.

• The tree structure guides the user through all the

necessary steps to complete the activity.

COST€R 2 – Graphical User Interface

MENU & TOOLBAR

PROJECT GUIDING INFORMATION REGARDING THE CURRENTLY SELECTED (SUB)ACTIVITY.ACTIVITY 1

…

…

…

…

…

ACTIVITY 2

COST TABLE RELATED TO THE SUB-ACTIVITY.

(Note: this table is only present at the final level of the tree)

COST€R 2 – Early preview

Testing version 2

Version 2 is ready within a month!

Interested in a free copy of the tool ?

Provide us with your contact details and we’ll send

you the full version (and a test user

questionnaire…)

For more information….

contact: helena.bijnens@atit.be

URL: http://www.coster.ws/

Thank you!